ECCO - SEM images of part processed fuel and nickel foil samples
Suhas provided some samples of part processed fuel and foil for the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project investigate.
Possibly the most beautiful New Fire fuel ever photographed
The attached download contains scanning electron microscope (SEM) images kindly taken by me356. There look to be whole ecosystems in there and even beautiful fractal structures.
If you identify any structures you wish more detail up please make requests in the comments below.
0280 - 0324 ... 1. nickel foil
me356 comments
I can say that Nickel foil is looking very good. Clearly the surface is processed in the right way. There is just some contamination, but probably not issue.
The surface is processed quite homogenously. To get even better results, I recommend few times longer processing so that bubbles are everywhere.
0325 - 0350 ... 2. post processed Ti + ?
me356 comments
I can't see anything unusual. It looks just like 2 mixed powders.
0351 - 0418 ... 3. processed Ti + Ni + C + ?
Note: The fuel here is only part processed and probably not pyrolysed to de-agglomerate it or ultrasonically sieved to size grade it. Only 20% makes it through these processes - but then 97% of the fully processed fuel is apparently active according to Suhas. This level of repeatability is very high and production ready.
me356 comments
Sample it is more interesting, nickel/titanium is rather spherical which is not optimal. It may be less capable of Hydrogen loading. So replacing it with carbonyl nickel might give much better results.
Do you know the composition of the dendritic microstructures in the last micrograph? The interstitial size between tertiary branching seems promising for NAS, and no cracking is evident at this scale.
Bob, one can sense ME356's focused interest as he sequentially zooms in through the entire set of images that you uploaded. It is noteworthy that Sri Suhas did not actually prep the nickel foil intentionally, yet the activation seems to have taken place while the reactor was in use. The "steel" that the nickel sulfate was plated onto is stainless steel, and delamination of such plating is common even without US as the cause. Special methods to increase the adhesion to stainless steel exist, but this is a case where the foil delamination is desired. Microscopic shreds of foil within the fuel may be of interest.... all is floating and intermixing randomly as a dry "liquid" within the core during the US stimulation.
Much appreciation, Scott
Hi Scott, You have a good understanding of the system, by
I assume you mean the hydrogen plasma reactor used to produce the Nickel foil. I would not presume that this was unintentional on the part of Suhas after all, he saw
Suhas has done things that seem likely to assist the effect trusting in the reasonably viable claims of others as he has gone. The fact that me356 identified this as the right kind of structure and that these kind of structures are called out by Clean Planet / Mizuno as being desirable is good news. It makes one wonder where the reaction is focussed in the ECCO cores.
No tvulgaris, but me356 said the sample was not perfectly dry - so perhaps some moisture being lost from some compound resulted in crystals forming when vacuum was applied. This is why you need EDX!